US envoy says toll from Myanmar cyclone might reach 100,000
by Associated Press
The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta's visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.
Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta's permission to deliver it.
Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday's storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.
"I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.
YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's isolationist regime blocked United Nations efforts Thursday to airlift food aid to cyclone survivors, U.N. officials said, as the hungry fought for what little food was available and drank coconut milk for lack of clean water.
Paul Risley, a spokesman of the U.N's World Food Program in Bangkok, said three flights were waiting to take off from Dubai, Dhaka and Thailand with 50 tons of high-energy biscuits. A fourth shipment aboard a scheduled Thai Airways cargo flight was likely to bring some biscuits later Thursday.
A spokesman for the U.N. Children's Fund said its staff in Myanmar reported seeing many people huddled in roughly built shelters and children who had lost their parents.
"There's widespread devastation. Buildings and health centers are flattened and bloated dead animals are floating around, which is an alarm for spreading disease. These are massive and horrific scenes," Patrick McCormick said at UNICEF offices in New York.
A few shops reopened in the Irrawaddy delta, but they were quickly overwhelmed by desperate people, said Risley, quoting his agency's workers in the area.
"Fistfights are breaking out," he said.
As a heavily pampered, too much loved and well taken cared of daughter, news about the the outrageously appaling incest case of Josef Fritzl, the 73 year old Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter and continually raped her for 24 years, http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/, has disturbed me and a lot of people -various opinion pages in the papers wrote about it. Such monsterous act was supposed to be the topic of my blog today, but the latest news about the military junta blocking the UN to airlift the cyclone victims has made me shift my attention to such horrendous act of callousness.
While Fritzl's own flesh and blood Elizabeth was imprisoned and repeatedly abused in the windowless cellar for more than two decades in their own apartment, stripping off her own liberty and dignity, the Burmese were held captives by their own army in their Burma. While Fritzl was supposed to be a protector of her own daughter, the military should be a protector of their own people too. Instead, the junta excellently did their best in stripping their own people not only their liberty and dignity but their civil and human rights as well-they were continually repressed for the past 46 years.
Few months back, Myanmar caught international attention because the supposedly long suffering monks led pro-democracy movements. Perhaps the repression was too much even the peace loving monks have to say, enough! Those attempts however, were crushed resulting to many deaths,clearly a man- made tragedy inflicted by the military junta to their own people. Protestations from the concerned organisations, nation states and the rest of the outside world fell on "deaf ears". Now that a force majeure struck Myanmar few days back, it was reported that no visible efforts were done by the military regime to help those Nargis cyclone victims. I was hoping that this time the junta would be kind enough in saving the lives of their own people but refusing concerned organisations, even UN at that, to airlift those hapless victims is really outrageous.
It takes tremendous efforts and great concern for lots of people to selflessly reach out in helping the cyclone victims, the soonest time possible. Instead of being thankful and the very least that they could do is to cooperate in saving lives and make the very sad condition of the Burmese more bearable in any possible way, the military junta is as heartless as it has been around 5 decades ago, and the calamity has added up to Burma's already sorry state . How long should they suffer? When will all these end? Life for the Burmese has been really stormy.
My heart goes to the victims, I wish that in my own small way I can do something. For the meantime, I can only offer them my prayers, and I fervently wish that somehow, their pain and sufferings would be alleviated, if not end soon and they can rebuild their lives again.
And I hope that no such storm would come again, but sunny days and brighter tomorrows.
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